Friday, November 21, 2008

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I remember a day that my dad, who I believe was working for General Electric at that time, seemed to be around the house more for a couple of days, and was smiling more and more playful with me and my little brother.He was about 28 or 29 years old at the time, played in a top-40 cover band on the weekends (see themonarchs.com), and was happily married to my mom at the time.I was out on the front lawn and I heard the screen door close with a whoosh. My dad floated down the stairs and picked a dandelion. He walked over to me and said "do you know you can eat them?" Before I could say no, he popped it into his mouth and ate it, laughing. I laughed too! Then I ate one, and to my surprise, it was very good.

He then challenged me to a foot race. I loved it! I do not mean to imply that my father did not play with me regularly, (he did) it was just that he had so much more joy in his eyes this day. Back to the footrace...first I kept up with him (I liked to run the 100 yard dash at school)...then he blew by me like a rocket yelling "I'm the six-million-dollar-man!" He simultaneously made the "rah-eh-eh-eht-tah" noise that always happened when Lee Majors accelerated to bionic speed. I was like, "wow, maybe dad's bionic too!" Then we went to our back yard where he showed me that he was. He suddenly hit with the palm of his hand our steel fence post that was set in cement in the driveway. It immediately shattered the concrete and came out of the ground! Holy hell! Dad is bionic!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Well, I have been behind in posting, due to the election.......but hey, what can I say.....I have lots of excuses! First, the election of Mr. Obama is absolutely (truly) the first thing that has made me proud to be an American in the past eight bloody (literally as well as figuratively) years! I helped do what I could for the campaign--wish it could have been more. I did work at the polls though, for very little pay, but I consider it a civic duty.

So, hope!I am very tempted to just go on and on about a political rant, like mentioning that while I am elated about the national election results (except Kentucky re-electing the fascist Mitch McConnell and going for McCain---with exceptions to the progressive areas like Louisville and Lexington)....but I am not going to do that. Suffice it just to complain most vociferously about the passage of the clearly unconstitutional Proposition 8 (to forbid those evile gays and lesbians from entering the misery of marriage!) And I won't drone on and on about the Repugnicunt Diane Feinstein campaigning against her own party that sponsored the progressive Proposition 5 that would have helped unclog our draconian jails and prisons in California by giving second chances and treatment to (nonviolent) so-called "drug offenders"---actually political prisoners of conscience who have just decided that THEY own their own bodies and minds, not the state, nor the Nazi-in-Democrats'-clothes-ex-mayor of San Francisco.

Asique, I am not going to write about that at all, see? See, see, ya dirty rats?!
You're covered!
Someone always says that, and it sounds to me like some line from an Edward G. Robinson movie. Battle stations! Red alert! So, returning to my topic, what gives us hope? Indeed, what is hope? Hope for a glorious future? A future of starships and an Earth free from war, disease, need for money etc.? I waver back and forth between hope and desperation. Yet I will not go
quietly into that good night. As the great Henry David Thoreau said, "most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Let's rededicate ourselves as a nation that truly acts as it says it does. Screw quiet desperation! It's horrible! Let's find our own song and sing it proudly, even if it may be slightly out of tune. We must live while we are alive! Yet, I know from my own experience that it is so very hard to find a personal way to feel like one can make a difference. But thanks to the Internet and the First Amendment, and the defeat of unconstitutional pandering attempts that politicians like Orrin Hatch and Diane Feinstein have made to abolish free speech on the Internet (see original text of the so-called "Anti-Methamphetamine Proliferation Act of 1999, Section 205), you can find a plethora of ways to help change the U.S.A. back towards the free nation that it was meant to be and that most of us demand it to be. Just Google "volunteer" and whatever your cause is that moves you. Be it helping make things "green," helping further multidisciplinary psychedelic studies or changing the closing hours (to 4 am at least!) in the bars in Mountain View, dive in! Also, meeting new friends, acquaintances, and lovers can sure bring hope when one is feeling ready to dive in (front of a speeding train.)

Andre S. Lange

Today I finish with a quote from a pretty decent poetess:

"It's the unknown child, so sweet and wild, it's too good to waste" Joni Mitchell